What I know, what I don't know and what happens in between

Main menu

Monthly Archives: March 2014

When did it become okay to nurse with your hair loose and flowing? I can live with tattoos visible and even a small number of piercings, but how, in all that is holy, do you justify having your hair hanging down?

Is it done just to see how far you can push it? I honestly thought you were a housekeeper, or maybe a service worker. I was a little suprised to see you answer the phone, though your abrupt response to the family phoning should have clued me in that you were a nurse. No one else can be quite so rude when answering a phone as a nurse.

You flitted in and out, handling dialysis and patient, phone and medications, all loose and free with not only your hair but your hand hygiene.

I would not trust you with my family to care for. Simply because you can’t even make a professional attempt to appear trustworthy. You see the young, new grad in the next pod? She has her hair pulled back and she washes her hands. She has had only one year to your 20, but she is a better nurse than you simply because she takes pride in her profession.

Your practice disgusts me. I weep for the patients and families exposed to your brand of nursing. Your lack of professionalism and just plain good sense is an affront to all who have nursed before you. Women fought and died to provide a level of nursing care beyond the whores and untrained, unclean. Yet here you are, providing what you call nursing practice, in dismissal of those pioneers who advocated cleanliness and a woman of good standing as basic qualities of someone deserving the profession of nursing.

I despair for our profession. We have come so far as to be back before we started. Weep with me.